Flash Flood

North of Etchingham the fields are flooded;

Beside our railway line, bursting streams

Run into one another, as we drift,

Stared at by sheep whose pasture, dank and muddied,

Seems more like the Somme than Southern Downs.

A heron smiles, fooled by the new lagoons

Of lifeless water, flushing out the voles

And sleepy dreys where last night all were drowned.

Higher up thin cemeteries of birch

Brood above dirty bracken and the waste

Of fallen leaves deadens any thought

That life might have survived this sodden dearth.

            Yet on the bank, as we creep slowly by,

            A scattered line of snowdrops gives the lie.

Brian Hick 25.1.09

©copyright Sally Hick January 2022